Josiah Johnson first gained recognition as a founding member and lead singer of the Seattle indie folk group the Head and the Heart. After stepping back from the ensemble in the late 2010s, he resurfaced several years afterward to launch a solo career. Retaining echoes of the group’s buoyant chamber-folk and pop sensibility, he issued his fervent first solo effort, Every Feeling on a Loop, on the ANTI- imprint in 2020.
While pursuing studies in mathematics and computer science at university, Johnson found his interest in music gradually eclipsing those academic intentions. An impromptu musical partnership at a Seattle open mic night sparked the creation of the Head and the Heart in 2009. As central figures in the worldwide indie-folk surge near the start of the decade, the band issued two well-received albums on Sub Pop before advancing to a major-label deal that yielded their third release, Signs of Light, via Warner Bros. Battling addiction at the time, Johnson still finished the project yet chose to depart the lineup several months prior to its September 2016 street date. The album, whose title derived from one of Johnson’s compositions, delivered the band’s strongest Billboard 200 showing to date by reaching number five. Even with that achievement, he withdrew from all further touring and ultimately exited the group altogether while pursuing sobriety.
He returned in early 2020, now clean and sober, bearing a set of fresh songs that chronicled his own experiences. Teaming with Lucius guitarist Peter Lalish and a select ensemble of musicians, Johnson tracked the material that became Every Feeling on a Loop, which ANTI- released in September 2020.
